Inspired by Pulitzer-winning essays, “Project 1619″ argues that slavery was central to the American Revolution, which defeated British colonists. For critics, an incorrect revisionism.”The first enslaved Africans were brought here more than 400 years ago. Since then, no part of American history has not been touched by the legacy of slavery”, says journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones in the introduction to the documentary series The 1619 Project – a reference to the year in which the first slaves arrived in the United States.
The series is an adaptation of essays published in 2019 with the same title in The New York Times Magazine, which earned Hannah-Jones a Pulitzer Prize. Produced by Oprah Winfrey, it was released this Thursday (01/26) in the United States, on the streaming platform Hulu.
The episodes complement the original essays, with sketches about the current life of African-Americans, ranging from the position of black workers in the fight for unionization in Amazon warehouses to the inability of black mothers to have access to adequate health services due to racism.
Like the essays that inspired it, the series focuses on Hannah-Jones’ own African-American heritage. Her father, who is descended from slaves and was raised in the “apartheid state” of Mississippi, served in the Army in the 1960s with the hope that “his country would finally treat him like an American.”
That didn’t happen, and he continued to work in the service industry all his life. However, he remained a proud patriot who always flew the US flag in his front yard.
Meanwhile, the then-young Hannah-Jones was rejecting that identity. “I didn’t understand how he could so proudly demonstrate his patriotism for a country that had treated him so badly,” she says in the series. Later, she concluded that her father was the true embodiment of the American dream.
“Our blood, sweat and tears are in this soil,” he said. “My father knew that no one has more right to this flag than we do, because we fought for it the hard way.”
Donald Trump leads conservative backlash
Hannah-Jones has received wide acclaim for her thesis on the 400-year history of American slavery and its socio-economic consequences, but her argument that slavery played a key role in building the American nation has been questioned by the right and the left.
For the left, the general thesis is correct, but some conclusions, especially about the role of slavery in the American Revolution, which took place from 1765 to 1791 and which defeated the British colonialists, have gained excessive weight – a criticism that Hannah-Jones accepted.
Meanwhile, the far right, including then-President Donald Trump, rebelled against this retelling of American history, and linked Project 1619 to the critical race theory movement, its latest target of the culture wars.
“Project 1619 and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda,” Trump said during a rally in 2019.
He then threatened to cut funding to schools in California that dared to include the subject in the curriculum, after the New York Times announced plans to make materials about Project 1619 available to educational institutions.
In response to Hannah-Jones’ argument that American Independence was declared in 1776 in good measure to maintain slavery – as opposed to the traditional account of the pursuit of freedom – Trump established the now-defunct Project 1776 to reaffirm historical orthodoxy through of “patriotic education”.
For Hannah-Jones, it was a political decision. “The oldest controversial issue in America is race,” she said in an interview with NPR radio.
Questions about the role of slavery
But leftist and more traditional historians have also questioned the argument that the American Revolution was largely promoted to maintain slavery, as British colonialists wanted to abolish the practice.
Pascal Roberts, a California-based analyst on black politics and co-host of the podcast This is Revolution, said Project 1619 is a “polemic” and is not based on “true history.”
He recalled the genocide of the indigenous population, the scarcity of women’s rights and the limited right to vote for white men after the Revolution of 1776, pointing out that the project lacked a broader class analysis of oppression in American capitalism.
Five historians also wrote an open letter to The New York Times in 2019 praising “all efforts to address the enduring centrality of slavery and racism in our history” but pointing out “factual errors in the design and process that created it”.
They said the bill’s claim that the 13 American colonies under British rule fought a War of Independence to maintain slavery is simply “untrue” and called for a correction to be issued.
New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein declined, responding that “historical understanding is not fixed.”
Soon afterward, African-American historian Leslie M. Harris revealed that she had been a consultant to Project 1619 and had “vigorously argued against” the idea that the American Revolution occurred in large part to preserve slavery.
In an article on the Politico website, she said that although Hannah-Jones continued to repeat this assertion, Project 1619 remains a “much needed corrective” to refocus on America’s black roots.
However, she said she feared that by ignoring her advice, editors would open the door for critics “to use the exaggerated claims to discredit the entire project”.
Series launched amid ban on African-American course
As Radical Republican politicians escalated their culture war against critical race theory and the idea that systematic racism helped shape US society, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis last week banned the teaching of an African-American course. -American in state schools.
This came after attempts to ban schools from including Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer-winning novel Beloved, which explores the impact of slavery on an African-American family after the American Civil War, in their curriculum.
In the face of this far-right censorship movement and current criticism of her historical method from across the political spectrum, Nikole Hannah-Jones is determined to get on with her work.
“You can ban what someone can learn in a classroom, but you can’t stop them from watching this docuseries and getting that information, so it’s really coming at a critical time,” she said this week.
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